The following interview took place July 29, 2010, hosted by MIKKEL MADSEN for his LinkedIn group, WACCM TOO.  The session was all texted (no audio, no video) and it’s been copied and pasted below in its entirety.

You can access this identical interview (along with all its typos) at http://sn.im/waccm-interview, but become a free member of WACCM first.

Or maybe better, just read on….

Mikkel Madsen – Welcome Norman, how are you doing?

Norman C. Berns – Doing well. Just back from a trip to NY.

Mikkel Madsen – Great to meet you live Norman and welcome back home I understand your trip to NY was work related. Please tell us about what it is you are working on at present?

Norman C. Berns – Mostly work. Got in a bit of pleasure, too. A trip up to Stratford to see Christopher Plummer in The Tempest. It was worth the miles.  But work…. I was meeting with people about my next project – probably a doc, most likely educational film.

Mikkel Madsen - Educational in what way and targeting who?

Norman C. Berns – My last series – The Writing Code – looked at the history of writing. The three shows were in development and production for about six years. I THINK they targeted upper high school and college, but they’re a pretty good view for anyone.

If I keep working on the writing series, it’ll be aimed toward college studies mostly. But I’m also working on other projects that’ll target high-schoolers.

Then again, I have this really good terror film on my desk and maybe I’ll take a year for guilty pleasures.

Mikkel Madsen – So you’re not only doing documentary and educational films. You also do fiction?

Norman C. Berns – Sure. Started in fiction and still love it. Took a long loop into documentary, but don’t intend to get locked here. Hope not anyway,

Mikkel Madsen- Just on your project about history of writing. Does it touch on social media like LinkedIn’s impact on our new expanded usage of writing to communicate?

Norman C. Berns – A good film – any kind of film, fact or fiction – tells us about the human condition. How we live, how we see each other. Oh sure, some get silly and wander off into LA-LA land, but good films create a world and explore it. In The Writing Code it was about understanding the meaning of writing. It’s one of those inventions that (almost) everyone takes for granted. But it changed (and still changes) our lives. In my terror script, it’s understanding and overcoming evil. Very different, but still….

It touches on new technology like LinkedIn, but only as an introduction. We did three hours that covered about 5000 years of history. If we ever make them, the fourth show will be about the digital revolution. The fifth will cover the power of writing (it’s the first thing that gets censored) and the sixth will look at how writing is (and will be) taught.

When we began the series, we were mourning the death of writing. It was getting harder and harder to publish. Or, more realistically, to make money from publications. While we were still in production, along came texting, a whole new form of writing that seems to be replacing verbal conversation. Fascinating stuff that’s still playing out. No easier to make money, but maybe that’s the next step.

Mikkel Madsen – Alright, jumping back to your recent Plummer experience. Talking about actors like Christophe Plummer: he makes me think “gentlemen” and one of the last old school actors of our time. Not sure if you would agree, but let me ask; if you had to choose. Who are your favorite actors/actresses of all times?

Norman C. Berns – Ohmygod, that’s an impossible question. There have been so many good actors over so many years. I think it has more to do with the role. Dustin Hoffman in Death of a Salesman gave one of the finest performances I’ve ever seen. Is he my favorite actor…? Well, he is in THAT role. Meryl Streep is a force of nature. Her work is incredible, but I’m not sure she’d be that good in every role. (Just the ones she’s done.) And Christopher Plummer is (for the moment), my favorite all-time Prospero.

Mikkel Madsen – I know, that was an evil question, especially when asking someone for whom film is his life.  But thanks for sharing.

Norman C. Berns – Mikkel, the list goes on and on. But you’re welcome. It was kinda fun refreshing my brain.

Mikkel Madsen- In your LinkedIn profile you describe yourself as a professional filmmaker. Now, I’m familiar with the roles of film instructors and film producers. But filmmaker is kind of new to me. My guess would be that filmmaker is the actual “maker” and therefore kind of sit at the top of it all and manage the entire project – including the instructor and producer. Is that correct?

Norman C. Berns – Yeah, it is for me. I think all newbies start out as filmmakers (to match your definition). Lack of money gets everyone to learn how the lights light, how the dolly moves, how the truck (or the trunk) gets loaded every night. Docs are especially good at that. Two, three people are a crew. Four seems like a luxury. So you research and plan and schedule and shoot and edit….

Mikkel Madsen – Sounds like your professional passion is not just the film industry, but just as much working with smaller projects or might I say smaller budgets, and therefore smaller teams, kind of like start-ups for each new film project! Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Norman C. Berns – I love the industry because I love the process. Where else, in what other job, does anyone get to pick an incredibly narrow concept and learn all about, talk to world-leading scholars, pick and choose who to work with, then build all the pieces, put on a tux and go to the opening…? And then move on to another project just as complex and involving. It’s better than sex. Wait. I didn’t really mean that. But it’s pretty damn good.

Now big features are like that, too, except you get to work with an entire army of highly skilled technicians and artists. Oh, it’s heady, exciting stuff. I can’t imagine doing anything else.

Mikkel Madsen – Is that what made you establish the company ReelGrok? You describe it as a universe for filmmakers around the globe with all resources available. Can you explain who actually uses reelgrok today, how it is funded/makes money and what your vision is for reelgrok?

Norman C. Berns – Reelgrok (now fashionably re-branded in all lower case as “reelgrok”) is my love. Maybe because I had good mentors – or maybe because I just like the people who make movies – I love to teach. Didn’t know that until I did it, but it’s an exciting thing for me. Exciting when people call/write years after to let me know their projects are in the works. But I don’t want to stay home and teach, road time is limited and I don’t want to settle in at some film school. So I set up reelgrok where I can provide information, resources….

How is it funded…? Well, sometimes it’s not. But we’re getting better all the time. We charge a small fee for membership – $75 a year (which we actually try to give back in discounts). And we’ve been lucky enough to add a few advertisers and sponsors. In coming months it looks like we’ll be adding more.

Mikkel Madsen – So you offer yourself as an online mentor or maybe more correct coach to new young filmmakers?

Norman C. Berns – Sure. Lots of it is gratis. So many people have basic questions and don’t know where to turn for an answer. So I try to spend a few hours every day answering questions that come in. When it gets too complex, I charge for my time, of course.

BTW, I’m not the only one who does that. As just one example, look at someone like Ted Hope. A major producer, more than sixty films to his credit, an armload of awards…. But he finds time to blog and Tweet and post almost every day. Film, after all, is a collaborative art and our work depends on the people around us. And if we don’t help train them, who will…?

Mikkel Madsen- You own and manage another online community called The Budgeting Group. How does this link in with reelgrok, if it does?

Norman C. Berns – The Budgeting Group is much the same thing, but with a very narrow focus. I was part of the team that developed a short-lived budgeting program call ProductionPro. Because it was aimed at newbies, I found myself fielding a lot of basic budgeting questions. I started the group so that there were more voices available to help. The program was eventually abandoned by its backers. But the group lived on.

Mikkel Madsen- How many registered members or users does The Budgeting Group have today?

Norman C. Berns - Oh, I think there are about 3000, though most aren’t very active.

Mikkel Madsen – For my live interviews in WACCM TOO group, I have had very little response from female group members wanting to be interviewed. While I get hundreds of male members contacting me! But on the contrary, women seem to be most active when it comes to asking interviewees follow up questions in the group.

Why do you think this is so?   Big question, but maybe you have similar experiences from your online communities in regards to who first gets involved….

Norman C. Berns – Interesting question. I’m sure there’s some inherent reason for it, but, but, but…. Let’s just call it an odd bit of chance and let it go at that (before we both get into trouble here)…. If you like, I can suggest some very verbal women who might like to participate. We’ll talk.

Mikkel Madsen- I’ll let you off on this one, but will keep asking around and let you know if I do get any closer to a more valid answer….

When not working with films or watching films, how do you enjoy life?  and I’m not looking for anything too intimate

Norman C. Berns – I’m a serious cook. Read my blogs – they all seem to start or end with food. If the house were on fire, I’d grab my films first, then my pots and knives. My knives were my first serious purchase when I came to NY, straight out of college.

At least during the summer, it helps that I’ve become an avid gardener. The tomatoes are coming in. The peppers (hot) are ripening. I’m pretty happy puttering there. Even happier cooking all the goodies.

The hell with the films – I can always get copies. I’d go for the knives. Pots. Cookbooks….

Mikkel Madsen- We seem to have some shared passions. I’m an ex-cook and next week I expect to pick the first home grown tomatoes in my garden.

My wife is a sucker for the British cook Jamie Oliver. I believe he just did a tour in America as part of his world tours and TV programs. His pretty good, so if you don’t know him, you should have a look for his web site and books….

Norman C. Berns – Sure, I know him. Well intentioned (and a decent cook) but, I fear, a bit jarring on some of the locals here in the US. We seem to love our addictions and bad habits more than anything, even reality….

I wish I’d studied cooking. Don’t know why I didn’t. I arrived in NY with a typewriter, a small box of clothes and a set of spices. That’s not a joke.  I really carried my own spices cross country.  But I guess the typewriter won out.

Mikkel Madsen – Norman, are you up for a handful of quick last but not especially easy questions?  Okay,  first: In your opinion what is today the biggest threat to America’s film industry?

Norman C. Berns – Quick, huh…?  Okay, I’d say that America’s film industry is killing itself. The Big Guys are killing everything but their own tentpole productions. Big bucks, overpaid stars, junk remakes of remade junk films. Hate it.

Mikkel Madsen- Talking about old or bad food habits and subsequently health. What do you think about health care in America today and is it improving?

Norman C. Berns – Short answers. Terrible and NO…. Long answers. Worldwide food is dominated by a handful of major corporations that sell junk like high-fructose corn syrup. Their whole economy is based on peddling that crap. Worse, the US government (meaning MY tax dollars) subsidizes corn which is turned into corn syrup and pushed on people all around the world. It’s terrible.

We are grossly overweight, addicted to sugars, overloaded on salt and dying off far too young. The US has the highest medical costs in the world, but terrible numbers for longevity, disease, every bad thing.

Mikkel Madsen – Is North Korea serious or just blowing their horns?

Norman C. Berns – North Korea, huh…? Quite a leap.  Okay, I think that, like Iran, these are countries run by borderline crazy people. Obsessive, buried in worlds of their own making. And there’s no telling what they might do. Odds are good they won’t do something idiotic. Then again, they have a long history of exactly that.

Li Chow – Before you start production, do you think about the distribution and marketing aspects of the film? If so, with the international box office getting higher than domestic, do you take into consideration how to distribute and market the film outside of the US?

Norman C. Berns- The most important tasks for a new filmmaker are marketing and promotion. I’d set them about equal with producing the film.  50% producing, 50% selling.  The odds are very slim that any indie film will be picked up by an old-school distributor. There are fewer of them to approach and many fewer outlets that welcome indie films. So the entire task of marketing and promotion (and often the actual distribution, too) falls to the filmmaker. Isn’t that a terrible thing…?

Of course, if you can’t explain to your investor how you’ll return their investment – EXACTLY how you’ll return their investment with a profit – you have a slim chance of getting their money in the first place.

The job is so huge, Jon Reiss coined the new production category, “Producer of Marking & Distribution” or the PMD. It’s detailed in his book ,“Think Outside the Box Office. And he blogged about it recently….

I came up with the idea when trying to think of a solution to the enormous amount of work that distribution and marketing can be for filmmakers without a distributor. The concept boils down to the fact that you didn’t make film on your own – why should you release them on your own.

The concept seems to be gaining traction. I wrote about the job after 25% of my Perth and Adelaide workshops indicated that they wanted to be PMDs.  In Adelaide, the SA Film Corporation has plans to set up an in house PMD to help support the distribution efforts of independent filmmakers in South Australia.

Also just this week, Adam Daniel Mezei wrote a blog post about the responsibilities of a PMD and has set himself up as a PMD for Hire.

I feel that this beginning indicates that there a huge numbers of potential PMDs in the world who love films, don’t want to be on set and love the work of distribution and marketing. These are the people we filmmakers should seek out to be our PMDs.

This August I will be heading to the University Film and Video Conference (for US film school profs) to give 2 presentations on how and why to teach film distribution and marketing to film students. This is not just so that writer/directors can be aware of the realities of the world that awaits them, it is also to train a new generation of PMDs (and their support crew).

Filmmakers also have to consider all the potential tax incentives and sales outlets everywhere in the world, not just wherever they may be standing. Fortunately, it’s a much smaller world these days – or at least more accessible – but the task is still huge and the job onerous.

And we thought we’d grow up to be artists…!

Mikkel Madsen – Norman, it’s time to close our live chat ….

It was a pleasure chatting with you as part of my live interviews and I look forward to explore other possible cooperation opportunities. But for now I’ll thank you for your time and “hand you over” to the group

For details about coming live interviews, how to put your own name forward for an interview or recommend others for consideration or become group sponsor, kindly contact me on mm@waccmtoo.com.

My very best wishes,
Mikkel